This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2003-19139, filed on 27 Mar. 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a head-gimbal assembly (HGA) of a hard disk drive, and more particularly, to a head-gimbal assembly of a hard disk drive having an anti-vibration function to prevent transfer of vibrations to a slider where a magnetic head is mounted.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical hard disk drive, as shown in FIG. 1, a hard disk D for recording predetermined information is rotated by a spindle motor 40. An actuator including a pivot arm 20 having a head-gimbal assembly (HGA) 10 and a voice coil motor 30 pivoting the pivot arm 20 is provided at one side of the hard disk D. Thus, when information is recorded and reproduced with respect to the hard disk D, the spindle motor 40 is rotated to rotate the hard disk D. The voice coil motor 30 moves the pivot arm 20 to move a magnetic head 11 (refer to FIG. 2) which is mounted on HGA 10 to a desired track position on the hard disk D so that recording and reproduction is performed.
HGA 10, as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, includes a base plate 16 coupled to the pivot arm 20, a loadbeam 15 connected to the base plate 16 via a hinge member 14, a slider 12 on which the magnetic head 11 is mounted, and an elastic support member 13 having one end coupled to the loadbeam 15 and the other free end portion at which the slider 12 is supported. Reference numeral 15a denotes a load point provided at the bottom surface of the loadbeam 15. The load point 15a contacts a portion of the elastic support member 13 where the slider 12 is supported and provides a load thereto.
However, in HGA 10 having the above structure, it is a problem that the loadbeam 15 is vibrated due to air flow or the vibration of the actuator and the vibration of the loadbeam 15 is transferred directly to the slider 12, via the load point 15a. That is, since the load point 15a and the slider 12, which are both rigid bodies, contact each other via the elastic support member 13 which is a rigid body as well, the vibration of the loadbeam 15 is transferred to the slider 12 without attenuation. Also, the vibration of HGA 10 become large since the vibration of the slider 12 generated by the excitation of air flow and disk vibration during the rotation of the disk D is not attenuated. As a result, a position error signal of the magnetic head 11 increases. The position error signal in a hard disk drive is generated mainly due to the vibration generated during the rotation of the spindle motor 40 and the disk D and the vibration of HGA 10. A position error signal energy over a 3 kHz frequency is generated by the vibration of HGA 10. However, since a vibration over 3 kHz is typically out of a bandwidth of a servo control system of a hard disk drive, actually, it is impossible to control to attenuate the vibration. Considering that a demand of a large capacity hard disk with an increased track density is common in these days, the position error signal in an uncontrollable scope may act as a major factor to lower reliability of a product. Therefore, an HGA having a new structure to solve the above problem is needed.